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I have participated in many school activities over the past few years. Each experience has been a learning experience in a new way. These experiences have helped me to form my educational philosophies.
- LD Inclusion Class - For 2 years I taught an LD Inclusion math class. I worked with the LD Resource teacher to help modify content and provide support structures for students with learning disabilities in math. I participated in IEP and 504 meetings during this time.
- Gifted Class - I have taught the 7th grade gifted math class for 1 year now. I also began my Gifted Certification training this year. I have really been able to take these students farther than they expected. Most of the gifted students are used to everything coming easily to them, but I still regulary get the comment, "Mr. Bright, you're making my brain hurt!" because of the level of challenge I can provide them. I have stressed the idea of proof and critical thinking in this class.
- Textbook Adoption Committee - I headed up our school's Textbook Adoption Committee. I ordered our new textbooks and continue to talk with the sales representative as we learn our new book and get the latest resources available for our text. I have also set-up for representatives from Prentice Hall to come and train our math teachers on how to use different aspects of the textbook.
- Math Task Force - I am the key 7th grade representative from our school on the district-wide Math Task Force. This Task Force is looking at ways to change our math curriculum through-out the district to help students achieve mastery of concepts. We have emphasized the basic skills at the elementary level and split the middle school topics across the grade levels. Before, students were rushing through the same topics during their 6th, 7th and 8th grade years. Now we have divided the topics between the grade levels to allow more time for students to actually come to mastery. Our two focus areas are for students to be prepared for high school mathematics with geometric relationships and integer operations. We have also recommended that at the high school level there be 3 years of math required to graduate and that there be yearly exit exams at all grade levels. These recommendations must be approved by the School Board, but we are confident that these changes will help our students
district-wide learn math and responsibility.
- Discipline Responsibilities - Some of the classroom teachers are in charge of handling unserved detentions. I have helped with this process since the beginning of 3rd quarter. I am in charge of rescheduling detentions, assigning AER (in-school suspension) and writing 1-day suspensions for repeated violations.
- Summer Bridges - I taught the math section of summer school during 2003 and anticipate doing the same during the summer of 2004. The Summer Bridges program is designed to help students make up for gaps in their learning. The expectations during summer school were the same as during the regular school and students had to demonstrate the same level of performance as other students to be considered for promotion. I really enjoyed this experience as it was one of the first years that all certified staff had taught and summer school and I feel that our student population benefitted greatly from this.
- Education Plus - I taught 1 quarter of Education Plus which is an after school program for struggling students. This is a time where students are split into groups of about 10 students per teacher and work half of the time on math and half on language arts. Unfortunately I could participate for 1 quarter because of the extra-curricular activities I am involved in, but I do think this is a worthwhile program for students.
- Unified Arts - I have taught students how to play guitar for a Unified Arts this year. This was a quarter long class where we focused on learning the basic chords and strum patterns.
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